The Jewish Chronicle
On this day: Attack on the 405 bus
July 6 1989: Terror on the road to Jerusalem
July 6, 2011 08:01
July 6 1989: Terror on the road to Jerusalem
July 6, 2011 08:01Fourteen people were killed in an incident that has since been described as the first suicide attack on Israelis.
The attack, which also left 27 people with injuries, occurred on the number 405 bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The driver had reached the junction after the Israeli Arab village of Abu Ghosh, when a man seized the steering wheel and began shouting in Arabic.
He pulled the bus to the right and, despite a struggle with the driver, succeeded in making it go over the side of a cliff.
Among those killed were a Canadian schoolgirl and a 15-year-old from Jerusalem, whose father had been injured in a petrol bomb ten years earlier. The perpetrator was later identified as a 25-year-old Arab from a refugee camp. He was hospitalised and subsequently convicted of murder, hijacking and terrorism.
